Gohmert Joins Texas Attorney General Race
SAN ANTONIO — Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, announced on Monday that he plans to join the Republican primary field for Texas attorney general in a bid to oust incumbent Ken Paxton.
Gohmert, who has served in the House of Representatives since 2005, was previously elected state district judge for Texas’ 7th Judicial District in 1992. Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry appointed Gohmert to fill a vacancy as chief justice on Texas’ 12th Court of Appeals in 2002, which he served for the remainder of the term that ended the following year.
Currently, he serves as a ranking member of the House Committee on Natural Resources and the judiciary. Additionally, he is a member of the House Freedom Caucus and the Tea Party Caucus. In 2015, Gohmert challenged then-House Speaker Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, in his reelection to the speakership for the 114th Congress but was unsuccessful.
“We need a Texas Attorney General whose top attorneys working for him have not found it necessary to send a letter to the FBI urging an investigation into corruption of their boss,” Gohmert’s announcement read on his campaign website. “This is not at all like Obama loyalists working in the Trump administration who worked to get rid of Republican President Trump. It is true that the current Texas attorney general filed some popular Republican-favored lawsuits, especially in the last year AFTER the latest ethical, moral, and criminal allegations against him arose from his top staff.”
Gohmert joins an already-crowded lineup of potential GOP successors to Paxton, including former Texas Supreme Court Justice Eva Guzman, Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush and Texas House Rep. Matt Krause. Civil rights attorney Lee Merritt and former mayor of Galveston, Texas, Joe Jaworski are set to face each other in the Democratic primary.
A staunch loyalist to former President Donald Trump, Gohmert supported the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. He also openly called for Robert Mueller’s resignation as the special prosecutor investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election on the grounds that Mueller could not fairly conduct the investigation due to his relationship with James Comey, his successor at the FBI.
In December 2018, Gohmert voted in favor of a House bill that funded the federal government through February while providing $5.7 billion for the construction of the U.S.-Mexico border wall championed by Trump.
In December 2020, Gohmert was one of 126 Republican House members to sign an amicus brief in support of Texas v. Pennsylvania, a lawsuit filed at the U.S. Supreme Court contesting the official results of the 2020 presidential election. Paxton secured Trump’s endorsement in July but must now contend with an even greater ally to the former president in the primary election slated for March 1, 2022.
“Also, keep in mind that if there is corruption or fraud in the four largest Texas cities in the November 2024 election, the district attorneys in those counties will likely still be Democrats, the Biden DOJ will still be Democrat-controlled that year, and we cannot afford to have the Texas Attorney General be a Democrat and turn a blind eye to problems Democrats have created,” Gohmert’s campaign website reads. “Also remember, the current Texas Attorney General won in the general election of 2018 with ONLY 50.6% of the vote, well before all of the current criminal allegations by his own staff attorneys.”
Reece can be reached at [email protected]
